


there are years that ask questions and years that answer

by serconstance



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Christmas fic, Fluff, M/M, Timeline, themed fic, weh-tun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5801587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serconstance/pseuds/serconstance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An introspective look at the timeline of Dan and Phil over many Christmases</p>
            </blockquote>





	there are years that ask questions and years that answer

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the fic “not in the hands of boys but in their eyes” by megan in the sense that it is and introspective timeline (sadly this fic has been deleted). The title is a quote by Zora Neale Hurston.

Christmas never is the same once you grow up. This is a mere fact. 

 

Once the magic that travels alongside all of us during our short-lived childhoods dies out, and we no longer feel enchanted with the snow, the christmas music and the decorating of the tree, it somehow becomes a rather mundane holiday – an excuse to eat a lot, get presents, not work and nurture the materialistic society behind christmas. 

 

The snow is nothing but an inconvenience, the cold bites at your hands and cheeks, the tree becomes a pain in the ass, and everyone seems to ask for money as a present. Christmas is a short-lived time in which magic used to surround you, and the memories of that are nothing but nostalgic and melancholic, especially when faced with the reality one has to endure once you get older. 

 

 

**2009**

 

Dan Howell is 18, and for the first time in a long time, the Christmas energy surrounds him once again as Christmas Eve approaches. Even the family isn’t a bother anymore. He is happy, he is calm, he can do this. That old familiar magic seems to finally be returning to his heart, thawing the walls of ice that he – as do most teenagers – had build up over the years. 

 

“You seem unusually chippy for christmas time” his mum says, a knowing tone in her voice and expression. She kisses his cheek under the recently placed mistletoe, and gives him a tap on the back. She knows this isn’t just a coincidence, and she knows it has nothing to do with school ending, or with it being christmas time and least of all because of the soon-to-be-arriving relatives. No, it isn’t any of that. 

 

She isn’t the greatest at technology, but she understands the feeling of talking to someone you love nonetheless. And if the pixelated image of Phil on Skype every night is what is making her Dan so happy, then so be it.

 

Dan continues to hang the final decorations around the house before asking to leave to his room, and takes the stairs two at a time when his mother knowingly smirks and nods. When he finally does get to his room, he locks the door behind him and confines himself onto his bed, noticing how loud his breathing sounds in the silence of Christmas Eve. 

 

Skype rings one, two, three, four times before Phil answers. Dan can’t help but think he looks lovely, more so than on all other days – granted, Dan thinks this every time they talk, but still. He is wearing a christmas sweater that is slightly loose around the neck, and Dan can’t stop staring at the milky skin of his collarbones, the moles visible even over skype’s grainy quality. 

 

“Hi, Dan” Phil says sighing and smiling, and Dan melts into a pool of love and adoration. The first thing that comes to mind as a response is ‘I’m so in love with you’, but he’d never say it out loud. 

 

“Hi, Phil” he says, and can’t contain a smile that nearly breaks his face in half, “I just wanted to call and tell you happy christmas because my relatives will be arriving soon and I didn’t wanna barge into your meal time and whatnot and also I wanted to ask if your gifts have come in the mail and thank you for the plushie you got me because I love it and –“

 

“Dan, breathe. I didn’t understand half of what you said” Phil answered, giggling. Dan always did this. He planned and planned what he was going to say, and stumbled on his own words and chocked on the sentences because he was always nervous when talking to Phil. Except it wasn’t bad nervous, it wasn’t nervous like before a math test nervous. It was nervous as in ‘please god let this boy love me half as much as I love him’ nervous. 

 

Dan giggled as well, feeling stupid for feeling this way, and shortly thereafter relaxed into the conversation with Phil. They talked about the gifts they'd exchanged, they talked about how much they'd wanted to spend this day together, and about how someday they would. Phil told him he’d never had a boyfriend over Christmas, and Dan said he hadn’t been happy at christmas since he was a child. But Phil loved Christmas, and if Phil loved Christmas, well, then so did Dan. 

 

“I have to get going. I think my relatives have started to arrive” Dan said, and sighed to have to hang up. He really did want to spend Christmas just him and Phil, wouldn’t even need presents or food or anything. Just Phil. 

 

“Yeah me too. And I haven’t even showered yet!” Phil smiled, waved at the camera, and they both hung up. 

 

As he was walking down the stairs, mustering the best excitement face he could pull, Dan felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. 

 

**Phil: forgot to tell you i love you <3 happy christmas :] **

Dan felt a shiver descending his spine as he went back up to his room to keep the feeling going for just a little bit longer. His relatives could surely wait.

 

 

**2010**

 

Phil didn’t mind living alone. He loved his one-bedroom flat in Manchester, he was close enough to home to visit his family often, and did just fine by himself.

 

But it was Christmas time, the town was all decorated and he wanted to have his own Christmas tree and someone to share it with. And of course he wanted that person to be Dan.

 

 Dan, who he wished would just move in once and for all; Dan, who left his underwear in one of the drawers alongside a couple of t-shirts and a pair of jeans; Dan, whose toothbrush was inside the glass in the bathroom, right next to Phil’s. Dan smelled of warmth and he’d never thought his home would leave that green bedroom in his childhood house, but lately it seemed to be found under his own checkered duvet, head on Dan’s chest, legs tangled, hopes high.

 

 And Dan agreed to the tree but not to moving in. Phil loved him and he loved Phil and not everything was perfect, but most things were good enough. They kissed on mornings before Dan left for uni, and they kissed on the tube, and they kissed at Starbucks when no one was looking, and they wanted to kiss everywhere. Most of all they kissed at nights, duvet on the floor, hands in each other’s hair and trousers next to the bed. Dan always seemed to emerge with marks all over him at breakfast the next day, and one time nearly cried when he realized Phil’d bought his choice of cereal too.

 

Phil knew they’d both be going home for Christmas, but it was still the 20th, and he still had a couple of days to hold Dan tightly before they parted ways. They always said sometime they’d spent Christmas together, and Dan promised, “next year we’ll do it.”

 

            They made a video putting up the tree, and after turning the camera off and ordering food, Phil couldn’t stop staring at Dan whilst he ate his chinese food. They were wearing matching Christmas socks and jumpers and Phil thought he’d be okay with having kids as long as they all looked like Dan.

 

            Two days later Dan swung by his apartment to say goodbye before Christmas, saying next year would be different, and that next year they’d do it together. They hugged tightly, promised to skype over Christmas break and Phil squeezed some candies into Dan’s backpack “for the journey.” Dan could not hold back the heart eyes. “I want to spend every Christmas with you, I really do” he whispered into Phil’s neck as he hugged him tightly once more.

 

            Phil clung to that promise as Dan shut the door behind him.

           

 

**2011**

 

Dan was angry, and Phil was scared, and none of them knew what to do about it. Dan had been angry since September, and Phil wished from the bottom of his heart that he never made that stupid video in the first place.

 

“We’ll be okay though, right?” Phil asked once over dinner, as they sat silently in the warmth of their Manchester living room.

 

“Yeah, yeah” Dan mumbled, and then looked up to Phil and spoke again, a bit more clearly this time “Yeah, we’ll be alright. Wanna do up the Christmas tree later?” He asked. This was a request for a truce, and Phil knew this. They’d have to talk about it at some point, and they’d have to find a solution to this growing distance between them, but right now Phil was more than happy to ignore the problem for just a little bit longer.

 

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

 

They’d bought new Christmas decorations earlier in the month, and they decorated their tree in silence, comfortably numbing any other sensation other than excitement for Christmas.

 

The realization that the Christmas tree he had once bought alone had become theirs hit Phil like a thousand bricks. Then he thought about the camera lens, the hairdryer, and the living room lamp, and he imagined what would ever happen if they were to part ways sometime in the future. They were so tangled within one another, so caught up in each other’s lives, nothing was his, everything was theirs, and this wasn’t a flat anymore; because Dan lived in it, and that, by Phil’s definition, meant it must be home.

 

He swept away the feeling and sneaked a look at Dan, realizing he was still as in love as ever, and ‘yeah’, he thought, too hopeful for his own good, ‘we’ll be alright’.

 

**2012**  
  


Phil woke up and the apartment was completely silent. This flat doesn’t feel like home yet, and it’s cold and uninviting. It’s even worse when the space on the bed next to you is empty, and Phil hasn’t managed to get used to it after all these months. They sleep separately, don’t talk about their relationship, and hardly touch each other anymore. It’s hard, but Phil stays because that’s what he does. He insists.

 

He goes into the kitchen to make coffee and finds a note on the countertop, written in Dan’s hurried, nearly ineligible left-handed handwriting.

 

**_Gone to my parents, happy Christmas, Dan xx_ **

 

And it’s cold, and harsh, and Phil wishes for things to go back to normal, and he wishes for that promise of a lifetime ago to finally come true, but as far as recent events go, it seems rather far-fetched. It’s not like he’d be staying for Christmas either, it’s just that it always hurts more being left behind than leaving.

 

In as many ways as Phil is lucky to have Dan, he is also unlucky. The boy had a great talent for leaving without saying goodbye – it was, after all, the lesser of two evils. Phil didn’t have such talent.

 

**2013**

 

Things were shaping up nice this December. London is beautiful, the air is crisp with the smell of mulled wine and cold, and Dan is happy.

 

He goes Christmas shopping and it’s not a burden to pick out something for Phil anymore, no, he is _excited_ by it. He made a list of things he wants to buy Phil: a lot of tiny presents instead of a big one. Half of them will be arriving over mail, and half of them are written on the scrap of paper he presses between his fingers inside his coat’s pocket. The Christmas spirit floods him, he drinks mulled wine, missed being at home with Phil, wants to get this over with to jump into a cab and wrap his arms around him.

 

It doesn’t escape him just how much can change in a year. And how much he has changed during the year. Things are going well. Really, _really_ well.

 

Years ago he had realized something that he decided to drown within himself, decided to ignore it, plastered the internet with evidence against it, screamed it from the rooftops, tried to destroy it in every way, nearly destroying himself, and Phil, in the process. But the thing about feelings it’s that they’re nearly impossible to kill once felt.

 

Dan knew this once he arrived at his family home for Christmas, and the smell was there, everything looked the same and felt the same. Except he wasn’t home. He was, much like all those years ago, not home at all.

 

He kissed his mum, and went up to drop his bag in his old room, nearly chuckling at how similar he felt to his eighteen-year-old self back when he had first fallen in love with Phil. And of course it came rushing back to him, that realization he’d had over skype years ago, and still thought about relentlessly.

 

He was still as in love as he had been back then, much as he tried to deny it.

 

It’s been said feelings are a hard thing to escape, and Dan was finally beginning to understand that. And yeah, he was ready to let Phil know again.

 

**To Phil:** **forgot to tell you ily**

**From Phil: but you did tho**

**To Phil: no but like**

**To Phil: it’s not just that**

**To Phil: what i mean is**

**To Phil: i miss you, you’re my home and ily**

**From Phil: i love you**

**From Phil: i never stopped btw**

 

Yeah, they were going to work it out. He was ready to let Phil know that, just maybe not the entirety of the internet. At least not just yet.

 

**2014**

As the year drew to an end, Phil was nervous. Good nervous, although nervousness is hard to tell apart sometimes. He knew with their plans for next year everything was going to change and, well, he was so content right now that it churned a weird feeling in his stomach when he thought about it.

           

He rolled over to find the bed empty, the dimple on the mattress still warm from where Dan had slept. Phil picked a little brown hair that had fallen on the pillow, digging his head into it to smell it. Dan always smelled best in the mornings before he took a shower, hobbit hair intact, face slightly scrunched from sleeping – just the way Phil liked it. Morning Dan had always been Phil’s favorite Dan, and he wished and nearly prayed that his Bear had not gotten in the shower yet so he’d be able to appreciate the sight once more.

 

He came into the kitchen and was terribly disappointed at the sight of a fully dressed, freshly showered, straight-haired Dan standing in the kitchen, mixing in Nescafé into two mugs. Phil forgave him after Dan smiled brightly and reached over to pull Phil into him by the t-shirt.

           

“Why’re you already all dressed up? It’s only morning” Phil yawned, drowning into the delicious sensation of coffee after having just woken up.

 

“Well, I’m sorry to inform you that it is nearly midday and that I have to catch the train to my parents at three” he answered, and kissed Phil good morning, coffee foam still lingering on his upper lip. “Also, you haven’t finished packing, and your train leaves at five.”

 

“You and your stupid actual reasons to leave the bed” Phil yawned again, pulling Dan into a deeper kiss this time, lingering for as long as he could. He felt as if letting go this time might be the hardest time yet, and felt as if Christmas spirit would not be present if Dan weren’t too. Of course this was silly, Phil knew it as well, but yeah. He was in love with Dan, and wanted to spend not only Christmas, but every holiday forever and ever alongside him. Maybe next year, he thought.

 

“You’re usually the one who complains that I’m late and disorganized you hypocrite,” Dan chuckled, and offered Phil a piece of bread that had just popped out of the toaster. He took it, gave it a bite, and dragged Dan into the living room by the hand, sitting at the dining table while switching on the television.

 

They ate silently for a while, fondly staring at each other, legs tangled, hopes high. Dan then got up to bring the plates back into the kitchen, and Phil watched him walk away, feeling as if his heart might burst with the emotion he felt when he was with Dan. Looking back, he could not believe how good he had it after the rough years they went through. But like everything else, they managed.

 

“Alright, I have to write some emails and then I have to leave for some last minute Christmas shopping before heading to the station. Wanna come with?” Dan asked, and Phil nodded as he headed towards the shower. So, yeah, maybe they wouldn’t spend Christmas together, but Phil was okay with this for now.

 

**2015**

 

Dan woke up on December 1st in their bedroom to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you” and the only thing he could think was ‘well, of course’. He stood up, went into the kitchen to find it empty, moving on to the lounge where a Christmas-sweater-wearing was sat unpacking all of their Christmas decorations.

 

Phil didn’t see him at first of course, humming loudly to the lyrics of the song (which he didn’t know except for the chorus) and sat with his back to Dan. The latter leaned onto the doorframe, being reminded of how happy he was. And yeah, he was really, really happy.

 

Phil turned around and saw him, singing loudly to the chorus as a greeting, pointing to Dan as he sang the almighty outstretched “yooooou” at the end of the song.

 

“Well good morning to you too.” Dan greeted him, giving him a kiss on the head as he realized the song going into a loop. “Say, are we gonna listen to this all day then?”

 

“Yeah! It’s Christmas the 1st today, after all” Phil answered, continuing to unpack a few branches of their plastic Christmas tree.

 

“Well, okay” Dan failed to hold back a laugh, then continued, “I’m gonna make a phone call and then we’ll have breakfast, is that okay?” Phil nodded, and he went into his room, dialing his mum’s number on the way.

 

“Hey Bear, how are you?” his mum answered, clearly surprised at the phone call. Dan made a mental note to call her more often.

 

“Yeah, I’m good mum, how are you?”

 

“Fine, fine, everything’s good. What’s up?”

 

“Well I was just thinking,” Dan started, feeling mildly guilty given the question he was about to ask, “would it be okay if I spent Christmas at Phil’s this year?”

 

She paused and then chuckled “Yeah dear, it’d be fine. I’ve actually been looking for a way to ask you to do that, since whenever you’re over for Christmas you disappear into your room to talk to him anyways. Might as well spend it with him.”

 

“Am I really that bad?” Dan laughed, feeling relieved at how genuine his mum sounded.

 

“One could say you are indeed smitten, love. Have been for over six years I’m afraid.” She answered, laughing alongside him.

 

They talked for a little while longer, she assured him that it was okay for him to spend Christmas with Phil and sent her love as well. “Next year he’ll come down to visit us!” she insisted, and Dan felt warmth spread in his chest given the mere possibility.

 

He hung up and listened to Phil humming the same song in the lounge. He walked toward the voice that, although slightly out of key, made him want to listen to Mariah Carey forever and ever.

 

“Hey Phil” he kind of shouted over the music, “d’you think it’d be okay for me to spent Christmas at yours this year? Kind of already told my mum I would.”

 

Phil looked up and stopped the music, and Dan could see a change in Phil’s eyes, he could see how much that meant to him. He walked over, kind of stumbled over one of the Christmas bulbs, and Dan thought he looked more beautiful than ever. They wrapped into a tight hug, Dan burying his head into Phil’s neck, smelling the slight cinnamon smell that lingered from his shower gel.

 

Dan Howell is 24, and he doesn’t know whether the emotion flowing through him is that long lost Christmas spirit, or if it has to do with the man he holds within his arms. He hopes it’s both but doesn’t really care. For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t want to be anywhere else but here.


End file.
